SpyFiles: Wikileaks claims $5B industry spying on mobile, webmail, GPS users, delivers interactive map showing surveillance by country

SpyFiles, a new project from Wikileaks and several partner organization, is based on 287 secret documents revealing a campaign of mass spying on users of webmail, GPS, and mobile devices, with this data being sold in a covert, 25-nation global marketplace that Wikileaks claims is worth $5 billion. At present, the underlying documents are not available (Wikileaks is withholding them as part of a fundraising drive), but an interactive map showing the spying on a nation-by-nation basis is up and running, and there's a page showing the press reportage on the map.

The Spy Files Wikileaks

• [MrRocking]

  Withholding as part of a fundraising drive? Whatever happened  to Whist, or a nice lemonade stand?

• [Stooge]

  Cory, I think you may have misinterpreted things. I took the $5bn market to be in surveillance tools, not in surveilled data.

  • [Stooge]

    BTW, the map doesn’t show where spying is taking place, merely which nations have companies that offer surveillance products Assange doesn’t like the look of.

  • [quietstorms]

    I believe they are selling the info. Looking at this ZDNet article:

    http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/new-wikileaks-files-expose-widespread-mobile-phone-email-hacking-capability/1218

    There is this sentence:

    “The technologies developed by this industry can be used to access Internet browsing histories and email accounts, through computing tapping or accessing mobile phones remotely. This information is then sold as wholesale information to governments or other private industry partners.”

• [pjk]

  I don’t yet understand why this is a “leak” of any kind. Didn’t we already know private companies sell spy technology to the bad guys? 

  http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/wikileaks-unveils-surveillance/

  • [Stooge]

    Apparently, the underpinning files are leaked presentations and so forth, which are presumably full of shockingly cynical pitches.
    As things stand, however, it’s nothing more than an interesting marketing campaign.

  • [Lemoutan]

    I don’t understand (but that’s probably because I’ve misunderstood, or not read everything) why this is being characterised as a covert marketplace. The word has a connotation of ‘secrecy’ but – afaict – it’s not secret, they just aren’t shouting about it. And why would they? It’s not as if they need to.

    And didn’t we already know that privacy is shot? You can’t uninvent this sort of technology. All you can do is ensure that it’s given the widest possible dispersal so that we, too, may employ it to keep tabs on our lords and masters.

• [efergus3]

  Sorry – just checked my heart rate and I’m just not that excited at this news. Or surprised.

• [bjacques]

  BBC reported this last night. Maybe WikiLeaks should leak one or two good ones(i.e., that name names) to show they’re still on their game.

• [ScytheNoire]

  Wait, so you are saying that corporations are illegally spying on us, then selling that information without our permission. I’m shocked!

  Wait, no I’m not. Democracy is dead. It’s a Corporatocracy now. The New World Order. You have the right to have no rights.

• [efergus3]

  What I find more worrying is this Carrier IQ mess with spying software on your (don’t have, don’t want) cell phones. The latest from Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/5864444/att-sprint-and-t+mobile-all-fess-up-to-using-carrier-iq

• [CastanhasDoPara]

  http://www.cryptome.org

  Scroll down a bit for a nice little treat.

• [parrotboy]

  I’m always amused by the inevitable parade of people who feel it necessary to harrumph about how not surprised they are.  This allows them to feel worldly and cynical while simultaneously deriding the importance of evidence.

  I am not surprised at a lot of the nasty things many of our governments do.  I am, however, highly aware of the huge difference between what ‘everyone knows’ and what is provable.

  Whatever else Wikileaks has done, it has provided tons of evidence with which all those things we all suspect/know can be proven or disproven.  That is not trivial.

  • [sgtdoom]

    Excellent points, parrotboy.

    A quick review:  everyone involved in this appears to be financially related to the Bonnier family whose tabloid publication (now where have we heard that term lately???)  first appealed to be the sole publisher of Julian Assange’s Wikileaks — which he turned them down on when he was back in Sweden, originally.

    Next, we see Anna Ardin, convincing a younger female and recent intimate of Assange’s (Sofia Wilan), to go to the Swedish police with her about Assange.  The case is dropped, then picked up again for highly questionable and political reasons.

    Next, a Bonnier tabloid begins publishing contrived stories about the Assange “rape”, etc., etc., etc.

    A Swedish prosecutor’s office, in Gothenburg, instead of Stockholm, strangely enough, takes up an already dropped case due to lack of convincing evidence, or any real evidence.  (Gothenburg is where Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Systems AB is located – Jeppesen Dataplan is popularly known as Boeing’s “extreme rendition airlines”.)

    The cast of characters:  The Bonnier publishing/media family, Ardin — who has worked for one or more of their tabloids, etc., Thomas Bodstrom, who has financial ties to the Bonnier business and was former Justice Minister who colluded with the American CIA to extreme rendition two innocent Swedish immigrants of Arab extraction, who were later acquitted and reimbursed monies for their injuries, etc. — Attorney Borgstrom, with ties to the Bonnier family, and likewise other members of Sweden’s Ministry of Justice, etc.

    Many posters here have asked why a series of expensive appeals, all funded by the British tax payer, are necessary? Couldn’t a prosecutor hop on a Ryan Air flight, (about 1 500 SEK, including a pleasant pub lunch) and interview Mr Assange in England?

    Lord Justice Thomas asked the same question during the extradition trial, and seemed to get a bit peeved that no one representing the Swedish prosecutor wa prepared to properly answer him. Hopefully someone is about to inject some much needed common sense and fiscal responsibility into this rotten case.

    http://markcrispinmiller.com/2011/02/eight-big-problems-with-the-case-against-assange-must-read-by-naomi-wolf/

  • [Lemoutan]

    I’m always amused by the inevitable parade of people who feel it necessary to harrumph about how not surprised they are.  This allows them to feel worldly and cynical while simultaneously deriding the importance of evidence.

    It’s always nice to amuse people.

    Is it fair to conclude, then, that you’d like these people to either instead
    (a) feign surprise, or (b) be less, um, harrumphant about it, or (c) just shut up altogether?

    I can’t see any other choices, but that may be a failure of my imagination.